


We Will Stand, Shoulder to Shoulder

by nerdsandthelike



Category: Billy Elliot (2000)
Genre: Ballet Injury, Billy and Michael are cosmopolitan theatre gays from a rural town, Brexit, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, dealing with being cosmopolitan theatre gays from a rural town
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 23:59:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13647141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdsandthelike/pseuds/nerdsandthelike
Summary: Looking back on it, that might have been the beginning of the end. It was a slow beginning to be sure. A small hint of a glimmer of an idea that his hometown might someday be a place he could not stand to be. On some level, Billy knows, the long, slow process of never coming back started on the first day he left.Or, Thirty years of Billy leaving Everington





	We Will Stand, Shoulder to Shoulder

**Author's Note:**

> The usual disclaimer: I do not own these characters
> 
> The unusual disclaimers: I have never seen the movie, only the musical, so if anything isn't movie-accurate, that's why.  
> I am not British and have not had a British beta (or any beta). Sorry.  
> I also absolutely did not attempt the dialect of the characters because it would be more offensive than helpful.  
> I am largely writing this based of my own feelings about returning to a more rural and conservative area of my own country after having lived in a major city, and therefore this may not feel accurate to people more familiar with the politics and attitudes of the UK.

Billy doesn’t go home anymore. There wasn’t a falling out, no screaming and crying. No declaration that he would rather be in hell than in Durham. He just... stopped going back. It wasn’t the ballet, his family had accepted that years ago, supported him, came to his performances for years, even when money was tight all around. It wasn’t him being a poof. He’d told them that when he was sixteen and knew himself better than he had at twelve when he was scared shitless about getting his brains kicked in just for the ballet. He’d come home on a break that year, taller than Tony and stronger than his dad, and when Tony made some half-crude, unthinking joke about Billy having all the luck at being surrounded by beautiful women, he’d just spit it out, in anger and in frustration. They’d been surprised, but not shocked. They didn’t understand, but he soon realized they didn’t need to. They handled it with all the grumbling ill grace they did the ballet.

In hindsight, he almost thinks it would have been easier if it had all blown up then, let him have his indignation and his dramatic exit, not this slow twist of the knife. He doesn’t really wish that. He had friends, the handful of poor and rural students at the School who all found each other, gave each other a place where they didn’t mock your accent and they understood when your parents couldn’t make it to every recital and why you didn’t spend the summers in Majorca. Some of them had come out, usually in ways better planned than his, and their parents had screamed or cried or never spoken to them again. Billy held them while they sobbed. When he thinks back to the look on their faces he regrets even letting the thought that it would have been easier if his family had been like that cross his mind.

Instead, his dad and Tony were supportive in their own ways. They fumblingly asked if there were any boys back in London when he was in Durham, and when he introduced them to boyfriends when they came down to London, they smiled tightly and shook their hands, if with too much pressure. He never brought the boys back to Durham. They could never belong in that world already mostly lost to him.

Well, one of his boyfriends came back to Durham. Michael Caffrey, with too sharp elbows and a too soft smile, got a job in London the day he finished his A levels. He took the last of his savings and used it to buy a bus ticket and pay the first month of rent. The job was shite, at some barely edible restaurant where he worked until two in the morning, and all he could afford was a tiny flat with three strangers an hour and a half away from his job. But Michael was out of Everington. Once he had that he could worry about all the rest later. And he did. Slowly but surely, he got a better job, a better flat, and even saved up enough to start uni part time.

Billy kept in touch with Michael. They’d fall back in together whenever he went to Everington, and later when Michael would come to London for a weekend, and they would dance and go to clubs and Billy would feel a pinch of nostalgia for the north, while Michael would scream over the music how he was moving to London first chance he got. They’d known each other too long, kept too many secrets for each other not to stay friends, but they weren’t always close. Billy heard through Tony when Michael left for London, and then he heard nothing for two years.

On Michael Caffrey’s twentieth birthday, the man himself showed up on Billy’s doorstep in a dress tight enough and sparkly enough to rival the ballerina’s costumes and announced that he was taking Billy out as a birthday present to himself. He’d just got a better job and he’d earned a night out. Billy would later learn this was his third job, but the first one that gave him anything like money to live on. At the time, Billy just hugged his friend and yelled at him in the thickest of what was left of his accent that he was a dick for not coming round for two years.

Michael hugged him back, then pulled away and looked seriously at Billy. “I had to do this on my own dancin’ boy. And there’s no point celebrating my arrival to London til I have the money to really live  in London.” Then he kissed Billy on the cheek warmly, like they were twelve again and nothing like that at all, and dragged his oldest friend out the door. Michael still claims that was the best birthday he ever had.

After that, Billy heard much more from Michael, bullied him into giving up the address of his (much better but still not nice) flat. The two of them went out like they were still kids some nights, and others they stayed in and watched bad movies and got shitfaced on their own. They fell back in together like they always had, and eventually they fell into bed and into a relationship. They didn’t talk about it much, they sometimes started, but there didn’t seem to be much left to say. They’d started this at the community hall in Everington a decade ago and everything since seemed to be just the logical next step.

When it was time for Christmas, they knew they’d go together. They would have regardless, but they wanted it to be clear. Out of spite or out of love, they needed Durham to know. So Billy rang his dad up and said he’d be bringing his boy for the week, no, not Ryan, this one’s a new one. You’ll like him. Michael didn’t say anything to his parents. They didn’t talk much. The day they left Michael took out his earrings and packed up his makeup in the drawer, put on his loosest trousers and a jumper, with an old coat over it. Billy dressed down for Durham too. He didn’t have to as much to change as Michael, but there was more he couldn’t hide. Tall and lean and walking like a dancer, he would have stood out in Everington in a miner’s outfit. But he wore his scruffiest shoes and scrubbed the polish off his nails anyway. It felt like a ritual to take off and pack up their London selves, carefully reapplying the northern boys their families still seemed to expect.

When they got off the bus, Tony and his Dad were waiting for him. They each gave him a hug that nearly crushed him, and when Michael followed him off the bus, he got handshakes from the both of them.

“Well I’m glad you’ve brought Caffrey along,” his dad said. “It’s been almost quiet here without your antics. Now, where’s this boy of yours?” Billy pulled Michael’s hand into his own, and Michael blushed in a way Billy couldn’t quite place. His family looked shocked for a moment, but then they relaxed. “Shoulda known you’d never bring some southern boy up here to us,” he said, and shook Michael’s hand again. His dad didn’t say anything else, didn’t make a big deal out of Michael, just treated the kid like he had always. Billy suspects it was a relief, not to have to impress someone new, to instead have someone who knew the town and its people. Michael too just acted normal, well, normal for Everington, which hurt Billy to watch. He was so small and so quiet compared to how he was in London. Looking back on it, that might have been the beginning of the end.

It was a slow beginning to be sure. A small hint of a glimmer of an idea that his hometown might someday be a place he could not stand to be. On some level, Billy knows, the long, slow process of never coming back started on the first day he left. He’d cried every night the first week at the School, but during the day he threw himself into classes and this new world, and by the end of the first week he convinced himself he would not go back even if it were offered. He learned to love London, big and grey and alive, and after two years at the School he stopped calling Everington home. He went back to see his family, he came home to start school again. But until the day he watched the man he’d loved since he was too young to know what that meant shrink in on himself, cower and stumble under the weight of expectation and tradition and small town small minds, he hadn’t seen it happening.

If you’d asked him, before that day, he could have listed a million ways in which he was different from the people in Durham: his accent was fading, his French more proficient, his idea of a Friday night out was a dance club not the pub, his favorite restaurant was run by a family from a country most people in Everington had never heard of. But it was all window dressing, until that moment. He was the boy from Everington, and he thought, somewhere that would never change, no matter how far afield he went. Maybe he had been naive, or maybe he had refused to see the depth of the changes, out of a sense of loyalty or gratitude to the people who brought him up and sent him to London. Maybe he just couldn’t see the changes for himself, but he could see them for Michael.

He didn’t bring it up with Michael right away, not while they were in Durham, where they slept in separate beds in separate houses and walked down the street next to each other, somehow farther apart than they had as kids. No one questioned it, of course, Billy and Michael, running about together was the most natural thing in the world. If there were rumors, there was nothing that hadn’t been said for years. If anyone had asked them they would have said something, but no one ever did, and they didn’t press the subject.

Billy didn’t bring up what he’d seen that first day when they got back home, either. He watched Michael grow an inch once he sat in front of his mirror and reapplied his lipstick, then another three when he put on his favorite heels. Billy kissed him in his tiny kitchen before they went out, and Michael fussed at him for smearing his face, and he looked so happy and right that Billy kissed him again. He couldn’t bring up that place, not there, not then, not in a moment where they were safe and alone, and where Michael was smiling again, his real smile, for the first time in two weeks. Billy wouldn’t break what they had with memories of a place that had caused Michael to feel so small. 

* * *

A year passed and they hadn’t been back north since the first time. They were planning to go up in February, just for a long weekend. Michael was in his first year of uni, working every spare minute he had and barely able to see Billy in between the front door and the bed when he came over. Billy hated to see him so tired, but he knew that nothing he could do would stop Michael from doing what he loved. He was glad Michael would have a weekend away from work and school, but he felt bad, taking Michael back to Everington, like he wasn’t taking care of him by bringing him to that place on what should have been a break. But the trip was still weeks away, and Billy was in his bed at some early hour of the morning, in a quick moment between waking up and going to lessons, listening to Michael’s breathing change from awake to asleep.

“Michael,” he said, when the boy beside him seemed awake enough to respond.

“Mhmmm,” Michael answered, rolling onto his side, burying his nose in Billy’s neck.

“You should move in with me.”

“It’s amazing,” Michael said in an accent that Billy still hears in his dreams, but that Michael never uses unless he’s too tired to help himself. “That might be the best idea you’ve ever had and you had to go and have it before eight in the morning. You complete arse.”

“So you’ll move in?”

“Course I will dancin’ boy, I practically live here already. Now,” he said, lifting his head just enough to kiss Billy, “shut the fuck up. It’s too early for you to be making serious decisions.”

Going back to Everington after that was the same as always and Billy kept seeing it: the way people pointedly didn’t ask questions when he mentioned that Michael was moving in, the jokes the guys at the pub made about immigrants, the fact that he had never seen a person who wasn’t white in Everington. It had been half a lifetime since he’d left, and his life had changed so much that going back to where everything had stood still was becoming almost painful. He left after the weekend and had never been so grateful. Michael was quiet the whole way back to London, only coming alive again when he stepped off the bus and took Billy’s hand, walking him down the street towards the flat that would soon officially be theirs.

He had never gone back very often, not enough money, not enough time, but he started deliberately stretching out the distance between visits, staying for less and less time. When he did go back, he was more defiant, less quiet. Michael looked at him strangely the first few times he pulled Michael close to his side in the pub, or when he started to argue back, just enough to push but not to make a scene, when their old friends started talking politics.

A year or two after _Swan Lake_ , Billy finally suggested to Michael that they both stay with his dad when they next went to Everington. They were in their flat, the lamp on, but the rest of the flat dark. It was late, Billy had just gotten home from a show, and Michael, working in costumes for a production of _MacBeth_ on West End had only arrived a little before him. When Billy raised the subject, Michael sighed a little, standing there in his ratty t-shirt, and looked back at Billy silently. Billy felt ancient in that moment, like he and Michael had somehow become an old couple, tired and quiet and connected in that way you are when you’ve spent decades together.

“Why?” Michael finally said, not quite breaking the illusion.

“Because I love you,” Billy said, walking over to him and putting his hands on Michael’s shoulders. “And we both know it’s fuckin’ stupid that we pretend. It’s not as if you spent much time at your place when we were kids, no point in you starting now.” He leaned his forehead against Michael’s. “I’m just tired of the pretending, even if we’re just pretending that everyone doesn’t know.”

Michael kissed him softly. “Alright, then. Talk to your da then. My parents can go fuck off if they have a problem.”

When they got to Durham, Billy wasn’t sure if they had a problem. He didn’t see them the whole time they were in Everington. He doesn’t think Michael did either. If his dad and Tony had heard anything from the Caffreys, they didn’t say anything. The only difference on this visit was that Billy and Michael slept next to each other in Billy’s old bed, too small for them, but still big enough to leave a space, a cold sliver between them that Michael refused to close. Billy would listen to his breathing at night, unable to sleep, wondering how he could be so tense even in his sleep. He wanted to reach across, to hold his best friend, to let him cry and hurt and heal, but Michael could not even do that in this town.

The next time Billy felt like he needed to go back, to spend a holiday with his dad and brother, he suggested that he go during the final week of rehearsals for the new play Michael was working on. A time when Michael couldn’t possibly join him, would be to busy to see him even if he was in London. The corners of Michael’s mouth tightened, but he nodded in agreement, and Billy went to Durham alone.

It was unbearable without Michael. He couldn’t regret leaving him at home, safe in the cocoon of the city, of his theatre, protected from the looks and whispers of the old miners. But he missed having him close, having something familiar even if he couldn’t touch him. He missed Michael Caffrey because he didn’t know who he was in Everington if he wasn’t with Michael. He’d lived alone in London, he could be just Billy there, even though he chose to be Billy and Michael. But in Everington, he had only ever been part of a set.

He came back to London late at night, walking down the streets by the orange lights of the lamps, back to his and Michael’s flat. He entered quietly, showered, and slipped into bed behind Michael. The man turned just slightly, indicating that he was awake. Billy wrapped his arms around Michael’s chest and they lay there silently until they both fell asleep.

This continued for years. Sometimes, every couple of years at the holidays, they would go back to Durham together. They would ride the bus, or once Billy got promoted to principal, they would spring for the train sometimes, Tony and his dad would greet them at the station, hug him, shake Michael’s hand warmly. He and Michael would share his old bed, sleeping just too far apart for either of their comfort. Michael would not talk to his parents, would not even talk about his parents. Billy would push the people around them in all the ways he could. They would ignore the looks they got. They would go home and get back into the city and their whole world would reorient, would become right again. But more often, Billy would go up alone, brave the cold and the stares for a weekend or a week or as long as he could stand, and then flee back to Michael’s arms the first chance he got. Michael never said anything about Billy’s decisions, but they both started planning Billy’s visits north when Michael couldn’t go.

* * *

He was 29, preparing to dance Desiré in _The Sleeping Beauty_ , when he was in rehearsal, and as he landed a leap, he felt a pop in his right knee, and everything went black for a minute. When he regained consciousness he was on the floor, his knee throbbing like he had never felt in all his years of ballet. All the other dancers were running over to him, asking him what was wrong, what had happened. He had never seen Meredith, his pas de deux partner look so concerned. It was all a blur after that. People asking him questions, what had happened, could he describe the feeling, walls that blurred by in shades of white, and finally a doctor, talking about needles and blood and ligaments and scans and finally surgery. He was left alone after that word, left to sort through all the things that had been said to him. He sat on the bed in the examination room. They had given him medicine for the pain, but he felt like he’d been numb since he felt the pop.

He doesn’t know how long he sat there alone before the door burst open and Michael, in tight black jeans and a loose floral blouse banged into the room, looking like he’d fought through all of rush-hour London to be there, which maybe he had, Billy wasn’t sure what time it was.

“You stupid boy,” Michael said in an accent that would always be just a little bit thicker than Billy’s, a small reminded of how much longer it had taken Michael to get out. “What have you done?” He came over and threw his arms around Billy, holding him until Billy felt himself begin to sob. He didn’t say anything, just let the pain and the exhaustion wash over him, digging his fingers into Michael’s shoulders, holding on for dear life. “There you go, my love,” Michael said, rubbing comforting circles along Billy’s back. “It’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

It wasn’t really okay. Or maybe it was. The surgery happened, the surgery went… fine. He would walk again, he would dance. By the time it was all done he had lost over a year of training. His roles were being danced by someone else. He couldn’t make the same movements with the same ease he had before, either from lack of practice or from fear. Every time he landed a leap he felt a twinge in his right knee, a reminder of how deeply his body had betrayed him.

Six months into the recovery, when he was being a miserable bastard, before he got that therapist, before he was sure he would ever be able to really dance again, he looked over at Michael, making a salad for a dinner party they were having that night and singing off-key under his breath.

“I don’t know why you put up with me,” Billy said. “You could do so much better than a crippled dancer.”

“You’ve caught me out, Billy Elliot,” Michael said with a laugh. “I only ever really loved you for the body. I was straight as an arrow until you started dancing, then I just couldn’t help myself.”

“Seriously, Michael. I’m sorry. You deserve better right now.”

“Seriously, Billy,” Michael repeated, looking up from chopping the tomatoes. “I have loved you for the sorry bastard you are my whole life, and I’m not going to stop now. Hell, I’d marry you if they’d let me.”

“You really would?” Billy asked.

“Of course I would,” Michael said, like he was stating the most obvious thing in the world, and maybe he was. “Now get your crippled arse over here and help me set the table.”

Once he had recovered, Billy officially retired from the Royal Ballet. He danced Desiré one last time, because he had something to prove to it, and then took a bow to thunderous applause. He’d been at the ballet a long time, so they shifted him over into the non-performing side. He taught classes for the upper school and did a little choreography for smaller pieces. He liked both of those, it kept him in the world, even if he missed the stage. He kept dancing, of course, not every day this time, but most days, enough to stay in shape, to stay sharp. After a few seasons he even took a couple character parts in the ballets, smaller, less showy, and not very frequently, but it felt good to move, even if it wasn’t what he was used to.

His retirement though, made going back to Everington even more difficult. A miner worked until he got his pension or the dust killed him. The town had worked so hard to get him to London, to put him on the stage that they could not quite understand what had happened. If Billy could walk and dance why was he not still dancing, wasn’t that what he had gone to London to do? What was he doing giving up and barely thirty? Billy didn’t know how to explain to them how much even a small injury could damage a ballet career, that even without the injury he would have retired in less than a decade anyway, that he loved what he was doing nonetheless.

The first time he went back after the injury, Michael went with him, allowed Billy to lean into his side as they walked through the snowy streets, gritted his teeth as well-meaning townspeople talked about how “all alone” in London Billy was, and sat there silently as old memories threatened to overwhelm both of them. Billy saw all of this and knew how selfish he’d been to ask Michael to come back with him, especially like this.

After that visit, Michael only went back to Durham one more time. With his slightly less full schedule, Billy felt like he had to go more often, but there was never any discussion of Michael joining him. They just kept going with their lives. Billy taught and choreographed and Michael designed costumes and they went to each others shows together and came home together, sometimes quietly, holding hands as they walked through the streets, sometimes like they were still twenty one and just realizing that this was real, running up the stairs and giggling for no good reason. They went to parties with friends, to galas and dinners, they went on vacation sometimes, where they teased each other that neither of them could stop working. It was a life, small and quiet in some ways, but good, and it was theirs.

* * *

When civil unions became legal, Billy brought it up over the breakfast table one morning. “You said years ago you’d marry me if they’d let you,” he said, shrugging over his eggs, “well?”

Michael stood looking at him in shock for a moment, then burst out in a smile and walked over and kissed him. “Of course you’d remember that you great poof.”

Billy called his dad the next week, invited him and Tony down for the ceremony, a small thing, just their close friends and a judge. They would register in a couple of weeks, then make everything official the next month. His dad and Tony were planning on coming, just for the weekend. Michael didn’t call his parents. They’d talked about it years ago, after a few visits where Michael hadn’t talked to his parents at all when they were in Everington. Billy had finally asked him what happened, and Michael had sighed. Nothing had happened. He had never been close to his parents, they had always been distant and old-fashioned. They hadn’t come to see him once since he’d moved to London. He hadn’t called them that first time he stayed with Billy, but they’d known about their relationship, and they hadn’t called either. It wasn’t avoidance on his part. They’d just stopped talking. Michael didn’t look upset, just tired and drained, like he always did when he talked about Everington. Billy had pulled him close and just said “alright then.”

The week before the ceremony Tony called and said they weren’t coming, that his dad had gotten pneumonia and couldn’t travel. The news subdued the tone of the wedding somewhat, but Michael and Billy were just glad to walk out of it with new rings and better tax benefits. They both had shows coming up too soon for them to take a honeymoon, but on their weekend off, walking around the park, Billy brought up going to Durham.

“I feel like I should be there to help Tony with dad now that he’s out of the hospital. And it feels wrong to not visit them with you since we just got... “ he held up their joined hands “civilly unioned.”

“One more time, Billy,” Michael said hesitantly. “I know it seems silly to be scared of a place I haven’t lived in almost fifteen years, but I can’t keep going back. I can’t breathe when I’m up there, and I love you, but there’s nothing for me there, hasn’t been for years, and I won’t do this to myself.”

“One more time,” Billy agreed. “You’re right. I’ve been asking you to do this for too long. I tried to protect you. It’s so miserable without you there. But that’s not fair to you.”

“Thank you,” Michael said, leaning his head on Billy’s shoulder.

When they went up, Tony was heavy with worry and the bags under his eyes stood out as soon as they saw him at the train station. He greeted them both without any real energy, congratulated them with a halfhearted joke about Michael finally making an honest man out of his brother, and drove them to the house he still shared with Billy’s dad. If they thought Tony looked bad, his father was worse. Paler even that usual and thinner than Billy had ever seen him. He smiled when they visited, and told a slightly different version of the same joke Tony had. Billy accepted the effort with a smile and asked how his father is doing. Jackie tried to make it sound better than it was, but Billy wasn’t fooled. When he glanced over at Michael he saw the same worry in his eyes, behind the usual reserve. They stayed for the better part of a week. They made idle chatter about their work around town, they bought all the groceries that his dad and Tony would let them, Michael avoided his parents, and everyone conspicuously didn’t notice their rings. At night they lay next to each other in Billy’s bed, and Michael relaxed back into Billy for the first time since they started coming back together.

“Thank you,” Billy whispered against Michael’s neck. Billy knows how much it took for Michael to be there, and he is still grateful, but he knew that Michael was right, that he could never ask this of him again.

The next time Billy went to Everington it was alone. It started a new strand in the pattern of their lives, but everything moved on and became normal and they were happy. They started to travel more, learning to really be on vacation, since they had something like time and something like money. They went to the beach and to Rome and they let themselves be excited and awed and giddy without hesitation. Billy got a job choreographing at the Sydney Opera House and they spent two wonderful months living in Australia. Michael keeps a picture of them from the beach in Australia on his desk. Billy smiles every time he sees it. A show Michael designed the costumes for went to Broadway, and so did they for a few months, living high up above a foreign city, enjoying the new sights and sounds. Six months later they went back to New York for the Tonys, and they held hands walking into the theatre and Michael didn’t win, but he really was ecstatic to be nominated.

Billy still went to Durham, maybe once a year. He slept alone in his old bed, he watched his father get paler and thinner, he watched Tony’s hair fall out, he tried not to hear the things they said in town, about him, about Michael, about anybody different from the people they had known all their lives. Some years he spent Christmas with his dad and Tony, then sat anxious on the train, desperate to be back in London with Michael for the New Year, to kiss him at midnight and remember that he gets to spend the next year of his life with his best friend. Michael always asked politely about Durham, always only about Billy’s family. He listened patiently, but kept himself removed. Billy understood, perhaps he even understands better now, after everything.

When Billy’s dad died it was hardly a shock, but Billy felt numb anyway. He got off the phone with Tony, who was crying into the receiver of the old corded phone he still kept in the house. Billy promised to come up as soon as possible, to do what he could to take care of the funeral. Michael saw the look on his face and knew. He held Billy and sat silently with him on the edge of the bed.

“I’ll call Diana,” he said, “tell her you won’t be there tonight. Or tomorrow. She’ll understand.” Billy just nodded, not sure how to speak. “I’ll come back with you, you know,” Michael said. “This is different.”

Billy shook his head. “You have work, dinner with Ahmed and Sara next week. Besides, you being there will just mean both of us are a little more miserable. And I think this whole thing is already shite enough without adding any more misery on top of it. Stay here, enjoy London. I’ll call every night.”

Michael nodded and held Billy tighter for a moment. “You go buy a train ticket. I’ll pack your things.” He stood up from the bed and kissed Billy on the forehead.

Everington was just as difficult as he had imagined. It was rainy and cold and unlike in the city where it never seemed to bother him, here it seeped into his bones. Tony was so exhausted and upset he could do almost nothing. The whole funeral needed to be planned, and there was so much to do. Billy worked on it for days, and then it finally was there.

He stood next to Tony in a suit that didn’t really fit him, listening to the people he had grown up with tell him how sorry they were for his loss. Some of them, the older ones, even thought to ask where Michael was, why he wasn’t in Everington too. Billy just smiled at their almost-kindness and gave some excuse. The faces had changed so much since Billy had last seen them, all gathered together like this, at the end of the strike. The ones he still really recognized from his childhood had gotten older, paler, had so many wrinkles that their original topography was already obscured. The faces he recognized from school had also gotten older, many were now carrying children of varying ages, others standing uncomfortably in their one suit or nice dress by themselves or in pairs. There were some faces Billy didn’t recognize, who had been too young when he moved away, or had somehow been brought into town since he left it. Most of these faces were burned into his brain since before he could remember anything, but even they were altered by a life he had almost lived but somehow escaped. The faces scared him. He knew he owed the people in this room everything, that he would never have lived this life without them. But when he looked at them, all he could see was the spectre of the life he just narrowly missed, and he shuddered.

He didn’t cry for his father until days after the funeral, when he had gotten back to London, was sitting with Michael on the couch, watching a movie before bed. Michael didn’t ask what was wrong, or if he was okay. He just sat there with him and waited for the tears to pass. And when they did, they both got off the couch and went to bed, and woke up the next morning and moved on with their lives.

Tony came down to London a little more often. He had a little more money after he sold the house his father had lived in for forty years. Billy went to Everington to help him move, but he didn’t go up often after that. His connection to the town had been anchored by his dad, and without him alive, Billy just couldn’t keep making himself go back. Tony being able to come to London more made him feel less guilty. He could put Tony in their guest room and take him out to dinners and cook him healthy food, the most charity he would accept from his little brother.

If it wasn’t always comfortable having Tony there, if he felt the awkwardness when any of his friends came by, or when Tony couldn’t pronounce the dishes in the restaurants they went to, then it was better to live with this small familiar scrape from someone you loved than having to go back and be engulfed by it. Tony tried. If it was stilted and difficult, at least it came from a place of love. Tony even insisted on being there when Billy and Michael converted their civil union into a marriage a few years after his dad died, though they kept telling him it wasn’t a big deal. He had never gotten over missing the first ceremony. Billy was glad to have him in some way, some piece of the life he started so long ago still present.

* * *

He went back to Everington one more time after he officially got married. He had only been twice since his dad died. Instead of staying in Tony’s house and hiding from the town he didn’t ever feel up to facing, he went out into the town, walked the roads he had known so well as a child. Maybe that was just because Tony’s house after the move had become as unfamiliar as any other place in town, but knowing now that it was his last time, he feels like it was saying goodbye. The day before he left for London, he was walking aimlessly through the streets when he saw Mrs. Wilkinson, smaller and less intimidating than he remembered her, but still standing up straight, like the dancer she never quite was. She had really meant it when she told him to piss off all those years ago, to run away to London and not look back. It may have taken him thirty years to fully realize what she meant, but seeing her reminded him that she was the only one who had known what would happen. Everyone else saw him as “their Billy,” pride of the town, for years after. Mrs. Wilkinson had let him go the day he got accepted into the School.

He had still visited her after he left, when he was back in town, not every time, but he saw her every few years. Debbie had moved to America of all places twenty years ago. Billy suspected that she had been pushed out of Everington by her mother just as much as he had. He didn’t keep in touch with Debbie after she left, but from what Mrs. Wilkinson told him, she was living a good life, not married, no kids, floating around the country from job to job, everything she couldn’t have had if she’d stayed in a tiny town in the north of England. Mrs. Wilkinson knew what she was about with her children. Mr. Wilkinson had died years before, and Mrs. Wilkinson had just stayed put after. She just lived on, making do with whatever her husband had left, and Billy suspected, whatever Debbie sent.

Billy called out to her on the street, and she turned and looked at him in surprise. She walked over to him and greeted him with the same casual insults that Billy had learned decades ago were her version of affection. She invited him back to her house for a cuppa, and he offered her his arm as they walked through the streets. Back in her small living room, he offered to help, and when she refused he sat uselessly while she made him tea.

“So,” she said when she sat down. “How’s London?”

“Same as always,” he said, which was always half-true. “I’m choreographing some more this year, maybe even going to Milan, but we’ll see if that works out.”

“And how’s your man?” She was the only person in town other than Billy’s family who directly referenced his relationship with Michael. He hadn’t even told her, she’d just assumed at some point, and she’d been right. It occurred to him that not a lot about his life missed Mrs. Wilkinson in the time she had taught him.

Billy responded lightly, told her about the shows Michael was working on, about the vacation they took after they’d gotten officially married, what they’d jokingly called their delayed honeymoon. Mrs. Wilkinson listened quietly and sipped her tea, asking questions occasionally in the same pointed and demanding tone. When he ran out of things to talk about, he asked her about Debbie, how she was doing. Mrs. Wilkinson answered with some detail, but she was never one to wax eloquent. The light was fading when Billy felt like he should be getting back to Tony for dinner, but he wanted to ask before he went. Maybe it was what he needed to let this be the last time in Everington, when that decision was made, but at the time he just felt like he had to ask for a reason he couldn’t explain.

“Did you know?” he said, looking at her sitting in the chair across from him. “What my life would be like, when you sent me away? That… all this would happen?” He waved at the air around him like it held answers.

“I’m not a witch, Billy Elliot,” she said looking over her tea. “I didn’t know the future.” She sighed. “But yes, I suppose I did know. I’d seen just enough of the outside world before I moved to this godforsaken town to know that you’d be much better being rid of it all together. If you made it into the School, then I knew you’d learn soon enough to do anything you had to to stay, because you’d see how much you were missing up here. Think back on it, Billy, what were were you going to do with yourself before you decided to go south? What would your life have been like?”

Billy thought a moment. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting older and can’t remember. But… who I would have been if I had stayed… I can’t even imagine that person. Would he be a miner? Would he have married the first girl who looked twice at him and settled down and had kids? Would he have been happy? I can’t believe I would have. But then again, he wouldn’t have been me.”

“No, he would have been a completely different person. A good person, a kind person, I like to think, and he might have had a good life. And he would have found the life you have now as unimaginable as you find his. Nobody in this fucking town is happy, Billy. We’re poor and sick and scared of our own shadows. And that’s why you’re so special, you got out, and what’s better, you took that Caffrey boy with you before this town ate him alive.”

“I didn’t-” he began, but Mrs. Wilkinson cut him off with a look.

“His parents may not be grateful you did, but they’re shite, so I’ll say thanks for them. Him and Debbie, you showed them a way out. I saw a lot of Michael after you left. He would be over here every other day, and once he realized I wasn’t going to yell at him for wearing Debbie’s clothes, he even would talk to me once in a while. But he and Debbie would be chattering away, talking about where they were going to go as soon as they could.”

“If they were so close, why don’t they talk anymore?” Billy said. “I knew they were friends, but…”

“Because Michael listened to me better than you did, you stupid boy. He hated every day he was stuck here after you left, even with Debbie here too. So when he got out, he really did piss off, dropped everything and ran, dropped Debbie too. But so did she. They knew it would happen. I’d guess even seeing each other again would still hurt after all this time.” They sat in silence for a moment. “Now follow your man’s example and piss off,” Mrs. Wilkinson said finally.

Billy stood and they walked to the door together. She opened it, but he leaned back in and hugged her, kissed her cheek softly. “I really am grateful, Miss,” he said “for everything, for Michael too.” She squeezed him tightly and then released him, letting him walk back into the night.

He went back to Tony’s place, then back to London. He talked to Michael about what she said, and they reminisced together, made a space for what they shared and what they lost and who they were and who they are. They both considered it, but ultimately decided not to call Debbie or try to find her again. They let go. And just like that, without intending it, without planning, without regret, Billy hasn’t been to Durham in three years.

* * *

He goes to Milan, to Majorca, back to New York, always with Michael. They see operas and musicals and Billy makes frustrated noises when someone misses a step, while Michael mocks bad costumes. They are surprised to be named godparents to the first son of Billy’s protégé, a dancer who had just started at the upper school when Billy retired, who he had coached through her teenage nerves and her first auditions. Her wife is a practical woman who does graphic design from home in between taking care of their daughter. When they arrive at the hospital to greet the exhausted couple, Michael jokes that they were just chosen because neither of them know any other men. The dancer laughs and rubs her wife’s hand while she sleeps. Tony still comes to visit, tells them he’s dating someone for the first time since dad died, a girl he’s known since grade school whose husband died of cancer a couple years ago. Life goes on in London, even in Durham, just as it always has.

Billy doesn’t make a decision to not go back until he is watching the news with Michael the day after the referendum to leave the EU. The anchors mention Durham, show the footage of a crowd of people screaming and cheering when the results are announced. Michael and Billy look at each other rather than the screen. They know the faces in that rally would be too familiar, not people they know, necessarily, but people they almost know. Billy turns off the set. He thinks of his students from Italy and Poland, of Michael’s assistant, a mousy girl from Spain. He thinks of the kinds of things people said in the run-up to the elections, the kinds of things he could almost ignore, except that they won. They won in Durham. He knows how his old school friends, the old miners still left alive, how they all voted. He knows what it says. He knows what they are saying to Michael, to him, to Debbie, to his students and his friends and his coworkers, what they’ve been saying for years now, if he is being honest with himself. He has moved too many years and too many miles away from Everington to even pretend to fit there anymore. So he stands up from the table, puts his bowl in the sink, and kisses his husband.

“Are you-” Michael asks.

“I’m fine,” he says. “I’ll need to be heading into work now, it’s going to be a madhouse today.”


End file.
